"Sophie," he _said quietly,
"I mentioned earlier I had an alternative proposition to make. Aren't you curious to hear what it is?"
Sophie bit her lip, almost certain she knew what he was going to say.
The pieces of the jigsaw all fitted together so neatly. This sudden, newfound chemistry between them, her lack of a job, Alexander still smarting from his treatment at Delphine's hands. She was afraid it all added up to a proposal of marriage she didn't want. She wanted Alexander, it was true, but not Alexander on the rebound. She wanted, she realised with burning clarity, to go to bed with Alexander right this minute. Her body ached with frustration just from standing between the two rigid thighs keeping her prisoner. But Kate Paget's stepson could never ask Dr Gordon's only daughter to leap into bed with him not without marrying her first.
"That's a very analytical look," teased Alexander. "Are you trying to guess what I have in mind?"
Sophie was unhappily certain what he had in mind. "I think so, Alexander, but please I don't want ' " Hey! “He shook her slightly.
"Wait until you hear my proposition, at least, before you turn it down!
Nothing sinister, I promise. I merely thought that now the job with Sam
Jefford has fallen through you might care to carry on working for me instead."
CHAPTER SEVEN
Sophie's face went blank with astonishment, while Alexander's eyes narrowed to a very unsettling gleam.
"You didn't know what I had in mind, did you?" He put a finger under her chin.
"Sophie Gordon! Did you by any chance imagine I was about to request entry into your bed?"
"Yes," lied Sophie faintly, weak with relief. Dear God, how close she'd come to making a complete and utter fool of herself. She offered up a silent prayer of thanks and gave Alexander a weak smile.
"Sorry."
He shrugged ruefully.
"Don't apologise. If you were anyone else under these particular circumstances we'd be in bed at this very moment, finishing what we started.
But you are your father's daughter-----' " And you're Aunt Kate's stepson,"
Sophie finished for him.
"Which makes not a blind bit of difference to the fact that I want you like hell just the same," said Alexander with intensity.
"But why? Sophie's question was deeply curious. “I’m just the same Sophie
I've always been. "
"If I knew why, perhaps I'd be able to stop wanting you! I'm on a losing wicket, one way and another.
_Knowing I can't have you makes me want you even more. "
"Just the same as Delphine."
"Oh, no." Alexander drew her closer.
"Not remotely the same as Delphine, since you mention it. For one thing, I was never allowed to make her untidy ' " Spare me the sordid details! "
Sophie struggled to wrench free, but his legs scissored to hold her prisoner as he jerked her against him.
"You brought it up. I'm just trying to make things clear."
One thing was very clear to Sophie. Standing between his muscular thighs, pulled close to him as she was, it was impossible to ignore how much he wanted her. The hard, pulsing proof of it burned against her, right through faded denim and finest bespoke wool suiting.
"Alexander she gasped.
"Sophie," he whispered in echo, and with a sudden show of strength lifted her off her feet and sat her on his lap, holding her still, ignoring her efforts to break free.
"I thought I wanted Delphine. God knows, she's beautiful enough. With you it's different. Very different." The passionate sincerity of his voice quieted her as he cradled her against him, gazing down into her eyes as though willing her to see he was speaking the truth.
"You're not beautiful. But the way you look is a complete irrelevance.
Sophie. It doesn't matter a damn whether you're dressed like this, or armoured in that no-nonsense stuff you wear to the office, or even with a red nose and swollen eyes like the night I made you so angry you threw up. I
still burn with the same urge to pick you up and carry you off. “Where? “asked Sophie, fascinated.
His smile raised the tiny hairs all the way down her spine.
"I'm not sure I rather think it's to my cave."
The telephone interrupted the moment of danger, making them both jump.
Alexander cursed and Sophie slid to the floor to answer it, unsteady on her feet from the effect of the new, uninhibited urges she had gone through life until recently believing were other women's prerogatives.
"Are you all right?" asked her father.
Sophie cleared her throat.
"Yes, Dad. Fine. No more calls."
"Great. One more to go and I'll be home."
Alexander followed her into the hall, shrugging into his overcoat.
"I'd better be off, hadn't I?" he said ruefully.
"Before I do, can I have an answer on the job question?"
"But, Alexander, you can't tell Mrs. Rogers you've changed your mind and you don't need two secretaries."
"Ah, but I do. How about the new branch in Arlesford?"
Sophie's eyes lit like lamps.
"Oh, Alexander do you mean it?"
"Of course I mean it! Why do you think I went out of my way to come here tonight?" he demanded, then smiled wryly.
"Which is not the whole truth and nothing but the truth, if I'm honest. I hoped I'd catch you alone."
Sophie's eyes slid away from his.
"I could have been out."
_"Kate told me you always stay in when David's on call."
"I might not have been alone."
"True." He shrugged and lounged against the newel post.
"To go on with what I was saying, you know Perry will run the branch in time, but in the beginning I'll need to get it off the ground myself. And I'll need an experienced secretary with me, one who can work on her own at times right from the start, since naturally I shall have to divide my time between
Arlesford and Deansbury. In short, I need you, Sophie."
Sophie threw her arms round him impulsively, tipping her head back to smile at him radiantly.
"I accept, Alexander with gratitude."
He smiled in mock-amazement.
"Why, thank you, Sophie. I'm not used to such appreciation from you. "
While you've always had far too much from other women! “she said, grinning, then sobered.
"But I meant it, Alexander. I really am grateful. I was so miserable before you came because Dad had been laying the law down about my staying with him and Aunt Kate until I found a job in
"Arlesford. And I couldn't argue because he hardly ever comes the heavy father with me." She pulled a face.
"I didn't relish the prospect of playing gooseberry to a couple of newlyweds."
Alexander laughed, and bent to kiss her cheek. "Well, now you won't have to.
I told you I'd taken on the role of your guardian angel."
Sophie looked at him thoughtfully for a moment. "One thing, though. I really do want the job in Arlesford very much, but how can I put it?
I mean it must be on a strictly business footing. “She flushed.
"Oh, lord, that sounds so big-headed. What I'm trying to say----' “Is that?
I must not presume on your gratitude," he said solemnly.
"No fun and games in the office, you mean."
"I wouldn't have put it quite like that. I'm just asking that we work together as we've always done."
"Of course. But on one condition. That you still let me help decorate your beloved cottage."
She laughed.
"Don't worry--I turn no one away with paintbrush in hand."
"Ah, but I insist on sole rights to the job." And with a glint of green eyes
Alexander bade her goodnight and went off, leaving Sophie in such a state of euphoria she had finished all the ironing and had a tray ready with coffee and sandwiches when her father eventually arrived home to hear the glad news.
<
br /> Julian Brett struck the only discordant note in Sophie's life in the days that followed, surprising her not a little by his depression over her imminent departure.
"But you've known for ages that I was going, Julian," she said, taken aback by his air of gloom as they dined together in Julian's favourite Italian restaurant.
Julian Brett was a slender man of thirty, with a pale face and a lot of soft dark hair. He was the curator of the Deansbury museum and lived with his mother in a large, antique-filled Victorian house only a stone's throw from where they were sitting at that moment. He refilled Sophie's wineglass and leaned _back in his chair, studying her with lachrymose eyes.
"But I thought you were going to work for this Jefford chap," he said.
Sophie drank her wine, feeling irritable.
"I told you it fell through, Julian. And if Alexander hadn't come to my rescue with the job at his new branch in Ariesford I'd have been forced to stay here until I found something else."
"At least you'd have been safely under your father's roof," he pointed out.
"And we could have carried on as usual."
"Oh, really, Julian, the status quo may be the be all and end all of your existence, but / happen to yearn for change."
"As I see it, Sophie, the only change in your life will be the fact that you live in that decrepit cottage instead of here." His mouth thinned.
"Otherwise your working day will be dominated by Alexander the Great as usual!" . - "Don't be feline." Sophie frowned at him.
"You happen to like living' at home with your mother, but I, love my family though I may, can't wait to have a little place of my own. All to myself," she added, to remove any possible doubt.
Julian fiddled with his coffee spoon and cleared his throat several times before saying rather desperately, "You could always have married me, Sophie."
He kept his eyes on the cheque red tablecloth, which was just as well, since the blank astonishment in Sophie's face could hardly have been described as flattering.
"But Julian," she said gently, 'you don't want to get married. "
"I don't want to lose you, either." He looked up in _appeal.
"I mean, Mother won't live for ever, and you've never shown any signs of marrying anyone else. In fact you've always said you never wanted children, which is fine by me. Won't you at least consider it?"
Sophie could hardly believe her ears.
"But Julian you're not in the least interested in having a wife!"
"I'm interested in having you for a wife, Sophie," he assured her, with more urgency than she had ever heard in his voice.
"We could go on as we've always done. Mother would be pleased to have you move in with us, I'm sure. She gets lonely, you know, and she's quite fond of you. And there'd be no housekeeping to worry you the Baxters have been with us for years."
Sophie searched hard for a way to couch her refusal in suitably inoffensive terms.
"It's really very sweet of you, Julian, but you know better than anyone that
I've never had marriage in mind not even the kind you're proposing." It hardly seemed charitable to tell him that the picture he painted of their future life together aroused a strong urge in her to turn tail and run out of the restaurant.
Instead she enlarged on her appreciation of the offer, pointing out that
Arlesford was only thirty miles away, that Julian could drive over and see her now and then once she was settled in at Ilex Cottage.
Julian looked at her aghast.
"My dear Sophie, you can't expect me to drive sixty miles or more in one evening just to take you out for a meal!"
Julian never took her out anywhere other than in Deansbury itself, in places where they could expect to _encounter most of the upwardly mobile population of the prosperous town, Sophie reminded herself, resisting the urge to assault her escort with the Chianti bottle. It came as less surprise to her, therefore, than it would have to others to learn that by insisting on her move to Arlesford she had placed herself beyond Julian Brett's particular pale.
The following evening was a complete contrast. After Sophie's last day at the Deansbury branch of Pagets, the entire staff gave her a lively farewell dinner at the George Hotel, an evening much more to her taste than the one with Julian. Perry was on form, as usual, keeping the entire company entertained, while Alexander, as host, oversaw the smooth running of the evening in his own effortless way, attentive to Sophie in an understated manner no one took for anything different from usual. Only Sophie was conscious of an extra nuance; the added electricity which dated from the day of Alexander's return from Greece, something which seemed to grow and intensify each time they were alone together. All week at the office
Alexander had been satisfactorily circumspect, apart from an occasional errant gleam in his eyes when they were alone, designed specifically, she knew, to give her an unnecessary reminder about the change in their relationship. But, as he sat beside her at the dinner- table, Alexander's thigh brushed Sophie's too often for coincidence, and each time the contact aroused a shock of response which surged through her entire body. The effort to hide it from the world at large filled her with illicit excitement, adding an edge to an evening she would have enjoyed to the full anyway, _even without the added bonus of sitting close to Alexander.
He drank very little, she noticed.
"You're very abstemious tonight," she commented in an undertone.
For a very good reason. I'm driving you home. “He looked very deliberately at her mouth, then away from her suddenly flushed face to press Sally
Huntley, his partner's wife, to more coffee.
At the end of the evening Perry sprang up to propose a toast, listing
Sophie's attributes with his customary verve.
As everyone rose to echo the toast Sophie sat with a lump in her throat, her cheeks poppy-red and her eyes very bright, finding it hard to keep her voice steady as she got up in response to cries of "Speech!" She thanked everyone for the exquisite jardiniere, told them how happy she'd been at the Deansbury office, and how delighted she was at the prospect of keeping in touch by means of the new Arlesford branch. She turned very deliberately to
Alexander. "And last, but very definitely not least, I wish to thank our host for an evening I'll always look back on with immense pleasure."
"That was a loaded remark you made at the end," commented Alexander as he drove her home.
"I was just being polite!"
"I'm sure everyone else thought so. My own impression was different."
"Do you deny you were well, touching me under the table all night?"
"No. You said I was to keep my distance during office hours. Which I have," he added virtuously.
_"You didn't include social occasions in the taboo."
"Then I should have. I was like a cat on hot bricks all evening!"
"You didn't show it."
"But you knew very well how you were affecting me, didn't you?" she accused.
"The same way you were affecting me, I hope." Alexander stopped the car a short distance from the house.
"There you are, Sophie. Home safe and sound."
"Will you come in for coffee?"
"Is your father likely to be up?"
"Yes."
"Then forgive me, but I won't. I'm not sure I can cope with more frustration tonight."
Sophie stared down at her clasped hands.
"Then I'd better go in.
Thank you for this evening and for bringing me home. “She reached up and kissed his cheek, and at once. his-arms shot out to hold her and his mouth closed hungrily on hers. When he raised his head he was breathing hard.
"I had almost persuaded myself I could let you go without doing that," he muttered against her mouth. "See what you reduce me to, Sophie Gordon making love in cars like an importunate schoolboy."
"I don't try to," she whispered.
"I just can't get used to the fact that you that I ' " That two old friends like us should
suddenly find they don't want to be friends, after all. "
Sophie drew away.
"Aren't we friends any more, then, Alexander?"
He gave a smothered laugh.
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